A placard urging fans to text their All-Star vote for Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is seen outside the White House in 2014.

A placard urging fans to text their All-Star vote for Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is seen outside the White House in 2014.

Photo: Courtesy Of The Golden State War

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Fans vote for Warriors early and often on social media

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Qumber Jafri, a Warriors fan for more than 15 years, remembers when Golden State first asked for his help.

Jafri had been texting in votes for all of the Warriors' league-high six players on the All-Star ballot when he saw the call on the team's Twitter account,@Warriors:

"IF EVERY ONE OF OUR FOLLOWERS VOTED FOR STEPHEN CURRY, HE WOULD START THE ALL-STAR GAME."

"That told me something special was possible," said Jafri, a San Jose resident. "If not for that, I would have only voted a small percentage of times that I actually voted."

The call to action from the Golden State brain trust was also sent out on Facebook, Instagram and China's version of Twitter, Weibo, sparking a historic run.

Curry was third among Western Conference guards when voting results came out on Dec. 26, and ended up receiving the most votes over the next four weeks. He will start in the All-Star Game on Sunday, Golden State's first starter since Latrell Sprewell in 1995, and was one of four players to finish with more than 1 million votes.

"It's a little surreal," Curry said, "to think what the fans did, typing my name over and over and supporting the team the way they do."

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When the results came in, Curry ran upstairs from the team's practice court to the executive offices and also thanked the team's employees.

One team, many platforms

"This year for the first time ever, there were eight ways to vote, with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram being new, and Weibo ... as well as NBA China and the NBA app," Warriors senior digital director Kevin Cote said. "It was challenging but a tremendous opportunity. Especially with our fans being very tech-savvy."

The Warriors were the first NBA team to design a fully responsive webpage that broke down all the ways to vote. Fans could vote once a day through each platform, and they did - especially on Twitter, where Curry had more votes than any other player.

Barbara Faue, a season-ticket holder for more than 25 years, said voting was "pretty nonstop."

"I started texting votes in at games, then when I saw the team say on Facebook that if everyone voted, he could start, that picked things up," said Faue, from Hayward. "Every single day, I would vote on the platforms, and my daughter in Portland would also vote.

"It became a family project."

One of Faue's favorite All-Star marketing pushes by the Warriors was the "Kid lookalikes" campaign.

The team found a younger lookalike for each of the six players on the ballot, using the kids in a series of videos and television commercials. The idea was born when an employee mentioned he had a friend whose son looked just like Curry. Little Steph, Miles Byrd of Stockton, came to a game and a practice to interview big Steph. (Little Andre Iguodala was played by the swingman's son.)

"They were very cute kids," Faue said.

The Warriors also sent out a Curry "Big Head" sign to every city on a January road trip, with voting instructions, and sent video postcards from the White House, Disney World and Miami Beach. Drawings were held for Jambox music players for fans who voted for all six players on Twitter.

"We did a lot of fun stuff, and then on Dec. 26, we started making the big push and Steph did a Q-and-A with fans on Weibo," Cote said. "It had 2.6 million impressions."

Eat your heart out, Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin. Curry has 1.38 million followers on Weibo, more than he has on Twitter (1.12 million).

'We were on to something'

All told, the Warriors franchise has close to 2 million combined followers. This includes over 1 million on Facebook, over 330,000 on Twitter, over 200,000 on Instagram, and almost 200,000 on Weibo.

"Fans realized how easy it was and embraced that they could make a difference," Cote said. "The first day after the call to action, we got 15,000 votes on Facebook alone. So we knew we were on to something, and the fans really responded. And the needle started to move."

Curry's hard work paid off with the All-Star nod, and so did the fans' hard work.

"I was ecstatic when it was announced that Steph was starting the All-Star game," Faue said. "I am a huge fan of Stephen Curry's. He is the heart of the Warriors, and he plays so hard and never takes a night off.

"The call to action worked, and I imagine a lot of teams will be copying it next season."

Full-court press

Stephen Curry was third among Western Conference guards (behind Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul) before fans really made a push. From Dec. 26 to Jan. 20, Curry received the most votes of any player in the NBA.